by R. T. Lowe
“And your wounds…?” Bill prompted.
“I didn’t know about this until the Faceman smashed my nose,” Felix said quickly, without thought. “I looked in the mirror and—” He noticed Bill’s stunned expression and cut himself short. Nick Blair, better known by his tragically deserved moniker the Faceman, had terrorized the country for almost four years, abducting teenagers and erasing their faces with six blasts from a .44 caliber revolver. Felix had ended the giant’s reign of terror, and in the process, learned he was Lofton’s agent—a ‘tester’. Remembering the grotesqueness of his face, the scars and missing parts, the gold teeth filed to sharp points, he thought the monsters were almost pretty by comparison.
“The Faceman?” Bill paused and anger crept into his voice. “That was you? You killed the Faceman?”
Felix stared down at his flexing toes, watching the water seep through the stretchy fabric. “He was Lofton’s tester—one of his testers—and he, well, he tested me.”
“A tester?” Bill exclaimed, his face reddening. “He was recruiting Drestianites?”
Felix nodded at Bill, feeling guilty.
“You didn’t think this was something I should know?” Bill demanded. “Lofton’s recruiting Drestianites and you don’t tell me? Why? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
The answer was simple. Allison. She didn’t trust Bill, especially after he’d lied about the Ashfield Forest Mystery, telling her and Felix wolves were responsible for the disappearances. Allison wanted to keep the circumstances of the Faceman’s death between the two of them for no other reason than lack of trust, but Felix wasn’t going to tell Bill that. He bit down on the side of his lip and shrugged, staring off at the tree line to Bill’s back.
Bill shook his head and said wearily, “Allison. It was Allison, right? Shit. Well, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to gain her trust, but you need to trust me. We need to trust each other.”
Felix nodded, weakly. Maybe he should have told him, he thought regretfully. Then again, maybe Bill shouldn’t have lied about Lofton’s monsters.
“A tester?” Bill repeated, his voice breaking. “Did he tell you anything? Did you get any information from him?”
“He said there were other testers. I don’t think he said how many, but I got the impression there’s lots. He said twelve kids passed his test.”
“Twelve Drestianites?” Bill said slowly, shocked. “A single tester found twelve Drestianites for Lofton?” He went silent, lost in thought, clearly considering the implications of twelve Sourcerors answering to Lofton. “How many didn’t, well, pass? Did he say?”
“Eighty-five,” Felix answered, and not wanting to think about the Faceman shooting all those kids in the face, he changed the subject. “What happened to you back there? With the gun? Why’d you drop it?”
“I dropped it?” Bill said, almost like a question, a thoughtful look crossing his face. He frowned for a moment and they trooped off at a fast pace, keeping the stream to their right, heading west for Bill’s Range Rover which they’d left on a winding logging trail a few miles from the building. “Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I? Well, I’m not sure. It was looking at me and I was looking at it. Then it told me to do it—and I did. I felt like I…had to. There was something about, something about…its eyes.”
Felix nodded and grumbled, “Those things are fucking awful.” He hugged his arms across his midsection, feeling a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Didn’t I tell you not to underestimate them?” Bill said reproachfully, giving Felix a tired smile.
“Yeah,” Felix admitted, grudgingly, the steam rising off his broad shoulders. “Did you hear the one in the ski pants call the other one ‘Number Twenty-Three’? What do you think that means?”
“Well,” Bill said, dragging a hand over his stubbled chin, “if monsters are to be taken literally, then I suppose there are at least twenty-three of those things. Twenty-one now.”
Felix blew out a whistling breath. “I’m glad only two showed up. If there’d been more—even one—I think we would’ve been…”
“Toast,” Bill said flatly. “Yeah, we may need a different plan.”
Despite everything, Felix laughed. Bill was close to forty but Felix had no trouble relating to him, unlike the way he sometimes felt around other people Bill’s age. Even with splashes of salt in his shaggy black hair, he still looked young, older than an average graduate student, but he could have been one of PC’s newly-minted professors. Of course he was just PC’s assistant groundskeeper, or at least that’s how he was presenting himself to the outside world. Felix knew very little about Bill who never seemed overly eager to divulge much of anything about his personal life. A time or two Felix had thought about asking him something of his past but those infrequent moments had slipped quickly away as more immediate concerns filled their conversations.
“Oh—by the way,” Bill said as they ducked under a downward swooping limb. “Back to the Faceman. I read the police report. The cause of death was a projectile to the head. How’d that happen?”
Felix looked over at Bill and grinned crookedly. “He asked me to move a brick. So I, well…I moved it.”
Chapter 2
Americana
Tanner, the youngest of the five Mayer boys, hated shopping, especially mall shopping, and especially if he had to do it without the assistance of his girlfriend Miranda whose birthday in three days was the reason he was on this solo outing. He didn’t know where to begin so he ambled over to the food court and sat down for a late lunch, hoping the burger and fries would provide inspiration. It didn’t, so he started on a strawberry banana smoothie, keeping an eye on the time.
Tanner had been in a sour mood ever since he and his mom had dropped off Lucas at the airport that morning. His older brother by just eleven months was now on his way back to Portland for spring semester. Meanwhile, Tanner was stuck in Excelsior Township, Minnesota. At the mall. He hated when Lucas wasn’t around—not that he’d ever admit that to him. His three other older brothers—Dale, Tyler and Bret—had gone off to college when Tanner was much younger, so when they’d left the family nest and didn’t return, it wasn’t such a big deal. With Lucas, it was different. Long before Lucas became ‘Minnesota Mayer’, star of the reality show Summer Slumming, he was just Lucas, and Lucas had always been around. So being in the house without him was weird…and boring. Tanner, however, was going to rectify that. Next fall, he planned to continue the Mayer family tradition of enrolling in Portland College. He couldn’t wait. The only hitch in his plan was Miranda, who wanted to attend the University of Minnesota, or at least her parents did, to save on tuition. He’d been trying to talk her into going to PC with him, and lately, he felt like she was starting to waver.
Tanner checked his watch again and sucked harder on the straw to vacuum the chunky pieces stuck on the bottom, making slurping sounds that caused a few heads to turn idly. His mom would be back for him in less than an hour and he still had no idea what to get his girlfriend. He would have preferred to drive himself, but his parents had “temporarily” revoked his driving privileges. Just before Christmas, he’d thought it was a good idea to sign their names on a skydiving consent form. Not having his own ride was a pain in the ass, but skydiving was awesome. Still worth it, he thought, smiling at the memory of the serious adrenaline rush.
Faint popping sounds, a series of five or six, rang out over the buzz of conversation and piped in music. Tanner raised his eyes curiously, setting his cup down on the table.
Pop-Pop-Pop.
Taylor Swift continued to play through the speakers, pining happily about a future ex-boyfriend. The people sitting at his table laughed at a kid stuffing a fry up his nose, ketchup smeared on the end to imitate blood. Those were popping sounds he’d heard. He watched the news every morning before school, and that’s what the survivors of the massacres always said. That’s how it always began: popping sounds. Tanner stood and backed away from his chair,
staring at the corridor that led to the restrooms and ATMs at the far end of the food court beyond the carousel and other kiddie rides.
Pop. Pop-Pop. Pop.
Tanner didn’t hesitate. He turned and bolted, weaving through the tables and shopping bags, heading for the elevator where a group of shoppers unable to use the escalators—parents with strollers and a white-haired man in a wheelchair—waited for a car to arrive. Get to the escalators, he told himself. Get to the escalators and get the hell outta here! A pug-faced woman with a pair of infants, one swaddled in a Baby Bjorn and another sleeping comfortably in her stroller, watched Tanner with a bored expression as he skirted the crowd, darting right and running for the escalators at the west end of the mall at the entrance of Lord & Taylor. Let them think he was crazy. He wasn’t. Paranoid maybe, but not crazy.
Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop-Pop.
“Firecrackers?” he heard someone ask casually as he pushed his way through the long line at Godiva.
The first scream came a moment later, sounding distant, but growing louder and seemingly nearer before it died out. Tanner didn’t want to believe this could be happening in his peaceful boring town, but he could feel the confusion building behind him like a balloon filling with toxic gas. People called out to one another, voices raised. More screams. Those in front of Tanner cocked their heads and looked off toward the food court, exchanging questioning glances.
Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop.
The sound of stampeding feet slapping on the floor filled the huge open space. The sporadic shouts and cries were now constant, rising in volume—and fear. Is this happening? Tanner thought. Really happening? A tall man holding a woman’s pocketbook and an Ann Taylor bag stood on a bench for a better view of the commotion. He raised a hand, pointed, and shouted, “I think he’s got a—”
Pop-Pop.
The man tumbled over the backrest and hit the floor, crumpled, unmoving. Tanner screamed and pointed at the man, hoping someone might see him and be able to help, though a voice in his head told him to keep running, that the man’s broken and twisted body was beyond helping. The man was dead, Tanner realized. Dead. He’d just seen a dead man. He’d seen him die. He’d never seen a dead person before. Is this real? Am I dreaming? Please let this be a dream! Please!
People came flooding out of Lord & Taylor, carrying children and bags, holding onto each other, their faces pale and frightened. They’re going the wrong way, Tanner thought, pulling up into a jog. What are they doing? He screamed at a girl running past him, trying to warn her. And then at a kid with his name clipped to his red and white polo. They didn’t look at him. They kept running. The wrong way. He watched an elderly man hobbling toward him, his beige sweater splotched with streaks of red. A woman in a hoodie and yoga pants clutched at her throat and fell. A man carrying a shirt still on its hanger slipped on her pooling blood and plunged into the base of a potted plant, scrambling to right himself. A teenager wearing a Vikings hat stopped to help and his face vanished in a spray of blood. He fell sideways, stiffly, like a block of wood. Tanner slowed. This can’t be real. He felt like he was watching a movie.
Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop. A woman and a young boy lurched forward and fell. Neither stirred. The movie, it seemed, continued to play. A wall of kiosks stood between the food court and Lord & Taylor, so how were the bullets getting through? he wondered, spinning around, searching, feeling disoriented. The shooter was to his back, right? Where was everyone going?
Then a sudden realization knocked the air out of him like a blow to the stomach. They weren’t going the wrong way. The popping sounds were coming from outside and inside the store—there were at least two shooters. And this wasn’t a movie. Or a dream. This was real. This was life and death. As the cresting crowd bore down on Tanner, he started up again at a full sprint and veered abruptly to his left, banging into a woman doing the same, cutting between a pair of kiosks. Jars of jellybeans and jawbreakers exploded in front of him in showering rainbows of color. The girl working at the candy kiosk threw herself to the floor, rolling for the shelter of her cart. The crowd to his back and the crowd from the department store converged at the bank of escalators like the outgoing tide crashing into an oncoming wave. People on both sides hit the floor as if a trap door had been pulled out from under their feet. The sharp staccato Pop-Pop-Pop echoed throughout the cavernous concourse, blending with the cries of sheer terror, confusing the location of the shooters, causing the fleeing crowds to run in every direction. The escalators bottlenecked and panicked shoppers flung themselves over the railing, landing on the people already on the stairs, knocking them over, and as the number of leapers grew, the bodies began to pile up, their collective weight crushing those trapped on the bottom.
Tanner pumped his arms, bolting for Posters & Frames Galore, fixing his eyes on the centerpiece of a Norman Rockwell exhibit, a print depicting doting parents standing over their two young children, tucking them in for the night. An explosion of glass rained down and the Rockwell disappeared behind the crystal curtain. Tanner covered his head and sped past Michael Kors and Anthropologie to his right, their doors closed, lights turned off. He kept running, breathing fast, trying to control the panic swelling in his chest. The scattering crowds were rushing frantically, screaming, tripping over and trampling one another. The public address system screeched with feedback, but if anything was said, he couldn’t decipher it. The Yankee Candle storefront exploded in a waterfall of glass. The girl in front of him was blown off her feet, striking the floor chin first without a sound. Something warm clung to his cheek. He heard himself screaming in terror and his legs started to burn, but his instinct to survive kept his eyes up, staring ahead, searching for a way out of the mall. Where were the exits? Where the hell were the exits?
Three stores down, Tanner glimpsed a man in a white shirt holding the door of an American Eagle, shouting, “Get in! Get in!” Tanner broke for it, reaching the entrance as the back of the man’s head erupted, the door behind him shattering. Tanner turned to look at the man and instantly regretted it. He turned back, breathing hard, his stomach knotting in pain as he fought an impulse to give up his lunch, and bolted for the rear of the store. Groups of people clustered under clothes racks and behind the counter, whispering urgently into their phones, crying. An exit sign appeared above a door at the end of a short hallway and he made a dash for it, accelerating, crashing into the push bar at full speed. It didn’t budge. Too scared to feel the pain from his throbbing shoulder, he tried again, slamming his full weight against the door, but it was impregnable, like trying to break through a brick wall. He slapped his palms against the door, cursing, kicking at it. Should he go back out? Leave the store and find an exit? There were also escalators at the east end of the mall. There had to be stairs too, though he thought they were near the food court. He made a move to retrace his steps and stopped himself. What if the shooters were waiting outside the entrance? He stood there catching his breath, trying not to panic, trying to think. His school had instituted active shooter drills last year and the mantra was ‘get out or get hidden’. He hadn’t found a way out of the mall and aside from the exit door, he hadn’t seen anything he could lock himself behind. But this was a store, right? There had to be another door, a storage room or—
Muffled sounds escaped from the changing rooms to his back. He stepped away from the barred exit and looked at the curtains, shaking his head at the position he’d found himself in. It was a terrible place to hide, not much better than staying out in the concourse and playing dead. The shooters would take one look at the curtains and assume people were hiding behind them. What choice did he have? Get out or get hidden. He gripped the nearest curtain tightly in his hand and swept it aside. A family of five stared back at him, their eyes wide and fearful. The mother shook her head at him furiously and yanked the flimsy barricade back in place, leaving him out in the hall by himself. Tanner stared at the dark fabric for a moment, stunned, wondering how she could do that to him. The space was crowded, bu
t there was more than enough room for him. Did she think he couldn’t keep quiet? That he’d actually do something to jeopardize the safety of her family? Didn’t she know people were dying? He collected himself before taking hold of the one beside it and ripped it open. Two young girls, whimpering and holding hands, looked down at the floor, their faces wet with tears, shivering as if they were standing out in the cold.
Tanner joined them, sliding the curtain rings over the bar. The younger of the two began to sob. “Hey,” Tanner said to her softly, “it’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. Tell me your name.” He was just as scared as the girls, but he had to keep it together. He couldn’t let them panic, and he had to make sure they were quiet—perfectly quiet. Their situation wasn’t good. A cloth sheet wouldn’t stop bullets. Their only chance of getting through this was going unnoticed and hoping the shooters didn’t search the back of the store. If they made their way to the hall, the changing rooms would be the first place they’d look.
“Rupa,” the older of the two answered for her. She couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. “Her name’s Rupa. I’m Rita, her big sister.” Like her younger sibling, Rita’s hair was black, her skin olive.
“Hi Rupa and Rita. I’m Tanner. We’re going to be okay, but we have to be quiet, all right? We can’t let anyone know we’re here.” His voice was steady, steadier than he felt. He thought again about making a run for it. Maybe the man who’d let him in—the man whose brains were now spattered across the storefront—had a key. He looked like the manager, and wouldn’t the manager have the key to the exit door? Someone had to. Why not him? What about the shooters? he reminded himself. They could be setting up a kill zone. Standing out there shooting at anything that moved. Just like he saw on the news. That was a mall too, and the shooters had waited at the exits, mowing down everyone who tried to escape.